Johann has lived all her life in Glasgow, yet both of her parents are Gaels from the Hebridean island of Tiree. In common with many other Glaswegians from such incoming communities, Johann feels her identity to be double-stranded, in which her love of the city is intermingled with the experience and ‘story-memory’ of island life and culture. Although as she explains, her Gaelic is now ‘faltering’, nevertheless this was the language that Johann chose to voice her first public statements at opening of the Scottish Parliament in 1999.